Conversations and Plugs

About Conversations and Plugs

Welcome to "Conversations and Plugs" — your gateway to the heart of African entrepreneurship. Join hosts Cliff and Wangu as they delve into deep discussions with the continent's most innovative entrepreneurs and business leaders. Discover the real stories, struggles, and successes that define the African business landscape. Our podcast is dedicated to empowering you with actionable insights and practical strategies, ensuring you're equipped to thrive in this dynamic environment. Tune in for each episode as we connect you with the tools, tips, and tales that can transform your business ventures

Publisher

Conversations and Plugs

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

11 Jun 2024

Latest episode

19 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

27 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   19 Oct 2026

   Prof. Bitange Ndemo on Africa's AI Moment: Can Technology Fix the Systems Holding Us Back?

   Prof. Bitange Ndemo was the Permanent Secretary who signed off on M-Pesa without a regulation in sight, the man who said Kenya needed 5,000 megawatts and got called drunk for it, and the one who predicted international calls would fall from 60 shillings to 3 when the undersea cable landed. They did. In this conversation with Cliff and Wangũ he starts at a junction in Uganda, where a government built a footbridge nobody uses and a policeman waves traffic through a working red light, and asks the question that runs through the whole episode: who benefits from disorder?From there it moves fast. Why one acre in Kisii growing maize is a waste of time, and what 5,000 chickens on a quarter of it could pay for. Why "productivity" and "data" don't exist in our mother tongues, and what we lose if someone else trains the language models. Why Telkom Kenya had 3,000 drivers and 1,000 vehicles. Why the whole of Africa once shared one gigabyte. Why a githeri recipe, held consistent from January to December, could do for Kenya what injera does for Ethiopia. And why the procurement law written to stop Moi is still stopping a university from building a dairy on its own land. CHAPTERS 00:00 A guest who needs no introduction 00:56 When disorder masquerades as development: the junction in Uganda 04:38 Four steps forward, two back, and why this moment matters 06:02 AI in education: mother tongue and the average-student problem 09:00 TB diagnosis on a phone 09:43 One acre in Kisii, 5,000 chickens, 3.5 million shillings 12:45 "Productivity is not in our language" 13:45 M-Pesa: innovation precedes regulation 16:35 Money sewn into trousers, and what had to be true for M-Pesa to work 20:57 Pro bono papers and a call from State House 22:40 Telkom Kenya: 20,000 workers and a 16 kbps cyber café 26:14 One gigabyte for the whole of Africa 27:15 Spectrum fights, digital migration, and breaking the information monopoly 29:14 Weaponized big tech and the US–China binary 31:16 Energy, data centers, and the 5,000 MW nobody believed 33:15 Why health data was worth money in Washington 34:35 Who benefits from weak institutions? 35:54 Train the models in our languages or lose 40% of the meaning 37:16 Addressing systems, coffee, avocado oil, and who benefits from chaos 41:36 A capable African state starts with trading with Uganda 45:15 Non-tariff barriers: 40 police stops 47:10 African AI sovereignty when the chip, the model, and the capital are foreign 48:04 Quantum computing and your M-Pesa PIN 51:27 Jobs that already exist: games, Pinterest, the creative sector 56:01 Have we romanticized the hustle? Tea from Meru vs Kisii 58:54 "What is a value chain?" Sukuma wiki, brokers, and cold storage 1:02:41 What Kenya should make, and the 40–50% we lose between farm and fork 1:06:41 A thousand githeri recipes and the discipline of consistency 1:11:11 Trademark the recipe: why jua kali innovation doesn't compound 1:13:54 Does Africa know what future it wants? The 60-shilling phone call 1:17:35 AI on campus: 700 scripts, cheating, and the abuse of power 1:19:02 China's 100-year plan vs every new Big Four 1:20:08 Jobs don't die, they shift: banana fiber and the MBA 1:22:41 Let students clean the campus 1:24:34 Losing his father at seven: no one is coming to save you 1:27:22 What he changed his mind about: the vice chancellor job and 5 billion shillings 1:31:23 Why 2030 worries him more than 2035 1:35:40 NYS, the military, tunnels, and trains 1:38:12 What Ethiopia got right: an airline and a dish 1:40:12 "Writing is the highest form of thinking" ABOUT THE GUEST Prof. Bitange Ndemo is a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Nairobi, former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communications, and Kenya's Ambassador to Belgium and the European Union. He writes regularly on institutions, technology, and development; his piece "When Disorder Masquerades as Development" was published the week we recorded.

2. 

   28 Sept 2026

   All They Need Is a Job | Lillian Madeje on Africa's Broken Path to Work

   Lillian Madeje has spent fifteen years working on the question she was given in her first job in 2011: how do you get the right young people to the employers who need them? The question is still open, and she is still working on it. Lillian founded Niajiri Platform, a Tanzanian HR tech company that trains career seekers and matches them to work. It began as an MBA capstone. It now has 72,000 registered users, about 5,000 of them active each month, and she is candid about what that gap taught her. The platform kept asking young people to polish CVs, take coaching and complete assessments, when what they wanted was a job. With Cliff and Wangũ, she explains why a trained salon graduate lost a placement over one hairstyle she had never been taught. She describes a program where most of the jobs available to technically trained youth were in entry-level sales. She also explains why Africa's education system bulges in the middle when it should narrow toward the top. She walks through the business model that kept Niajiri running when $1 CV downloads only trickled in, what she learned from running her first company without a board, and the honest feedback from her first board meeting. She also talks about her mother, Evelyn Madeje, who traded fish, raised cows, chickens and pigs, ran a salon and a bakery, and left her family a 16-acre grape farm in Dodoma. If you hire in East Africa, or want Niajiri Match working in your country, Lillian wants to hear from you. Chapters 00:00 Crossing borders: welcome, Lillian 02:10 A spiderweb of human connection 04:45 Fifteen years, the same hiring problem 07:40 A plaster on the wound, and the salon test she failed 10:00 What Niajiri actually does 16:00 Technical skills and the polytechnic stigma 20:30 China's curriculum and whether our economies can absorb graduates 22:30 The magnifying glass: redesigning the platform 28:00 72,000 users, 5,000 active: "All they need is a job" 31:30 The Mother Teresa heart meets the business model 35:30 A first company without a board, and employee 001 41:00 Protecting her energy, and the value of a leadership coach 45:30 Niajiri in 2030 and an African workforce without borders 51:30 What must stay human when AI does the shortlisting 53:45 Growing up the last born, and a mother who did everything 57:30 Lightning round 59:45 How to help Niajiri #ConversationsAndPlugs #Niajiri #Tanzania #FutureOfWork #AfricanFounders #YouthEmployment

3. 

   24 Aug 2026

   Eva Gachoki: The Farmer Who Wants Other Farmers to Win

   Eva Gachoki (https://www.linkedin.com/company/101660135/admin/page-posts/published/?share=true#) is a fintech lawyer who now farms 107 acres in Kiambu, she started with five acres in 2020. She grows French beans on a continuous cycle, planting every 21 days, January to January. Last year she became the first person in Kiambu to grow rice, on 20 acres of black cotton soil that kept drowning her beans. In this conversation she lays out the economics most farmers are never shown. Paddy rice leaves her farm at KES 65 a kilo and reaches the shelf at 170. French beans cost roughly 70 shillings a kilo to produce; brokers offer 60. Thrips took 16 acres across four cycles this year, so she stopped planting for a month rather than repeat the loss. She also walked into six banks with signed contracts, six years of statements and a working farm, and was asked for collateral. What she wants instead: farmers in the room when policy is written, agribusiness training that goes past the science, technology built for Kenyan soil rather than adapted from someone else's, and a collective model where small farms are treated as a single unit. If you build agritech, lend to agriculture, or write policy for it, this one is worth the 90 minutes.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

302,562

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

6 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 54 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

71

Social presence

0

YouTube

93

Engagement

0

Contact Conversations and Plugs

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.